“Rather the worse for wear,” he observed.
“Kreuzmillionendonnerwetter! That is my Gigerl!” roared a deep German voice across the room.
The three Russians started and looked round quickly. One of the porters, a burly man with an angry scowl on his honest face, was already on his legs and was striding towards the table.
“That is my Gigerl!” he repeated, laying one heavy hand upon the board, and thrusting the forefinger of the other under the doll’s nose.
Dumnoff stared at him with an expression which showed that he did not in the least understand what was happening. Johann Schmidt’s keen black eyes looked wonderingly from the porter to the Count, while the latter leaned back in his chair, contemplating the angry man with a calm surprise which proved how little faith he placed in the assertion of possession.
“You are under a mistake,” he said, with great politeness. “This doll is the property of Herr Fischelowitz, the well-known tobacconist, and has stood in the window of his shop nearly four months. These gentlemen” — he waved his hand towards his two companions— “are well aware of the fact and can vouch—”
“That is all the same to me,” interrupted the porter. “This is the Gigerl which was stolen from me on New Year’s eve—”
“I repeat,” said the Count, with dignity, “that you are altogether mistaken. I will trouble you to leave us in peace and to make no more disturbance, where you are evidently in error.”
His coolness exasperated the porter, who seemed very sure of what he asserted.
“That is what we shall see,” he retorted in a menacing tone. “Meanwhile it does not occur to me to leave you in peace and to make no more trouble. I tell you that this Gigerl was stolen from me on New Year’s eve. I know it well enough, for I had to pay for it.”
“How can you prove that this is the one?” inquired the Cossack, who was beginning to lose his temper.
“You have nothing to say about it,” said the porter, sharply. “I have to do with this man” — he pointed down at the Count— “who has brought the doll here, and pretends to know where it comes from.”
“Kerl!” exclaimed the Count, angrily. “Fellow! I am not accustomed to being called ‘man,’ or to having my word doubted. You had better be civil.”
“Then it is high time that you grew used to it,” returned the porter, growing more and more excited. “The police do not overwhelm fellows of your kind with politeness.”
“Fellows?” cried the Count, losing his self-control altogether at being called by the name he had just applied to the porter. Without a moment’s hesitation, he sprang from his chair, upsetting it behind him, and took the burly German by the throat.
“Call a policeman, Anton!” shouted the latter to one of his companions, as he closed with his antagonist.
The two other porters had risen from their places as soon as the Count had laid his hands on their friend, and the one who answered to the name of Anton promptly trotted towards the door, his heavy tread making the whole room shake as he ran. The other came up quickly and attacked the Count from behind, when Dumnoff, aroused at last to the pleasant consciousness that a real fight was going on, brought down his clenched fist with such earnestness of purpose on the top of the second porter’s crown that the latter reeled backwards and fell across the Count’s chair in an attitude rendered highly uncomfortable by the fact that the said chair had been turned upside down at the beginning of the contest. Having satisfied himself that the blow had taken effect, Dumnoff proceeded to the other side of the field of battle, avoiding the quickly moving bodies of the Count and the porter as they wrestled with each other, and the mujik prepared to deal another sledge-hammer blow, in all respects comparable with the first. A pleasant smile beamed and spread over his broad, bony face as he lifted his fist, and it is comparatively certain that he would have put an effectual end to the struggle, had not Schmidt interfered with the execution of his amiable intentions by catching his arm in mid-air. Even the Cossack’s wiry strength could not arrest the descent of the tremendous fist, but he succeeded at least in diverting it from its aim, so that it took effect in the middle of the porter’s back, knocking most of the wind out of the man’s body and causing a diversion favourable to the Count’s security. Schmidt sprang in and separated the combatants.
“There has been enough dancing already,” he said, coolly, as he faced the porter, who was gasping for breath. “But if you have not danced enough, I shall be happy to take a turn with you round the room.”
The poor Count would, indeed, have been no match for his adversary without the assistance of his friends. He possessed that sort of courage which, when stung into activity by an insult, takes no account whatever of the consequences, and his thin frame was animated by very excitable nerves. But an exceedingly lean diet, and the habit of sitting during many hours in a close atmosphere, rolling tobacco with his fingers, did not constitute such a physical training as to make him a match for a rough fellow whose occupation consisted in tramping long distances and up and down long flights of stairs from morning till night, loaded with more or less heavy burdens. He was now very pale and his heart beat painfully as he endeavoured instinctively to smooth his long frock-coat, from which a button had been torn out by the roots in a very apparent place, and to settle his starched collar, which at the best of times owed its stability to the secret virtues of a pin, and which at present had made a quarter of a revolution upon itself, so that the stiffly-starched corners, the Count’s chief coquetry and pride, had established themselves in an unseemly manner immediately below the left ear.
Meanwhile, the little restaurant was in an uproar. The host, a thin, pale man in an apron and a shabby embroidered cap, had suddenly appeared from the depths of the taproom, accompanied by his wife, a monstrous, red-faced creature clothed in a grey flannel frock. The porter whom Dumnoff had felled, and who was not altogether stunned, was kicking violently in the attempt to gain his feet among the fallen chairs, a dozen people had come in from the street at the noise of the fight and stood near the door, phlegmatically watching the proceedings, and the poor old woman from the country, who had been supping in the corner, had got her basket on her knees, holding its handle tightly in one hand and with the other grasping her half-finished glass of beer, in terror lest some accident should cause the precious liquid to be spilled, but not calm enough to put it in a place of safety by the simple process of swallowing.
“They are foreigners,” remarked some one in the crowd at the door.
“They are probably Bohemian journeymen,” said a tinman who stood in front of the others. “It serves them right for interfering with an honest porter.” The Bohemian journeymen are detested in Munich on account of their willingness to work for low prices, which perhaps accounted for the tinman’s readiness to consider the strangers as worsted in the contest.
“We Germans fear God, and nothing else in the world,” observed a mealy-faced shoemaker, quoting Prince Bismarck’s famous speech.
The man who had wrestled with the Count seemed to have resigned himself to the course of awaiting the police, and leaned back against the table behind him, with folded arms, glaring at the Cossack, while the Count was vainly attempting to recover possession of the pin which had fastened his collar, and which he evidently suspected of having slipped down his back, with the total depravity peculiar to all inanimate things when they are most needed. But the second porter, having broken the chair, upset a table covered with unused saucers for beer glasses, and otherwise materially contributing to swell the din and increase the already considerable havoc, had regained his feet and lost no time in making for Dumnoff. The Russian, enchanted at the prospect of a renewal of hostilities so unfortunately interrupted, met the newcomer half-way, and, each embracing the other with cheerful alacrity, the two heavy men began to stamp and turn round and round with each other like a couple of particularly awkward bears attempting to waltz together. They were very evenly matched for a wrestling bout, for although the G
erman was by a couple of inches the taller of the two, the Russian had the advantage in breadth of shoulder and length of arm, as well as in the enormous strength of his back. The Cossack, having assured himself that there was to be fair-play, watched the proceedings with evident interest, while the pale-faced host shambled round and round the room, imploring the combatants to respect the reputation of his house and to desist, while keeping himself at a safe distance from possible collision with the bodies of the two, as they staggered and strained, and reeled and whirled about.
The Count at last abandoned the search of the lost pin, and having pulled the front of his collar into a more normal position trusted to luck to keep it there. The table at which the three had originally sat had miraculously escaped upsetting, and on it lay the poor Gigerl, stretched at full length on its back, calm and smiling in the midst of the noise and confusion, like the corpse at an Irish wake after the whisky has begun to take effect.
The Count now thought it necessary to justify the unfortunate situation in which he found himself, in the judgment of the spectators.
“Gentlemen,” he began, very earnestly and with a dignified gesture, “I feel it necessary to explain the truth of this—” But he was interrupted by the arrival of a policeman, who pushed his way through the crowd.
CHAPTER V.
“WHAT IS THIS row?” inquired the policeman in his official voice, as he marched into the room.
The man who was wrestling with Dumnoff was a German and a soldier. At the authoritative words he relaxed his hold and made an effort to free himself, a movement of which the Russian instantly took advantage by throwing his adversary heavily, upsetting another table and thereby bringing the confusion to its crisis. How far he would have gone if he had been left to himself is uncertain, for the sudden appearance of two more men in green coats, helmets and gold collars so emboldened the spectators of the fight that they advanced in a body just as Dumnoff threw himself upon the first policeman. The Russian’s red face was wet with perspiration, his small eyes were gleaming ferociously and his thick hair hung in tangled locks over his forehead, producing with his fair beard the appearance of a wild animal’s mane. But for the timely assistance of his colleagues, the representatives of the law, and, most likely the majority of the spectators would have found themselves in the street in an exceedingly short space of time. But Dumnoff yielded to the inevitable; a couple of well-planted blows delivered by the rescuing party on the sides of his thick skull made him shake his head as a cat does when its nose is sprinkled with water, and the mujik reluctantly relinquished the struggle. At the same time the porter who had claimed the doll came forward and touched his bare head with a military salute.
“What is your name?” asked the first policeman, anxious to get to business.
“Jacob Goggelmann, Dienstmann number 87, formerly private in the Fourth Artillery, lately messenger in the Thüringer Doll Manufactory.”
“Very good,” said the policeman, anxious to take the side of his countryman from the first, and certainly justified in doing so by the circumstances. “And what is your complaint?”
“That doll, there, on the table,” said the porter, “was stolen from me on New Year’s eve, and now that man” — he pointed to the Count, who stood stiffly looking on— “that man has got possession of it.”
“And who stole it from you?” inquired the policeman with that acuteness in the art of cross-examination for which the police are in all countries so justly famous.
“Ja, Herr Wachtmeister, if I had known that—” suggested the porter.
“Of course, of course,” interrupted the other. “That man stole the doll from you, you say?”
“Somebody stole it with my basket, as I stopped to drink a measure in the yard of the Hofbräuhaus, and I had to pay for it out of my caution money, and I lost my place into the bargain, and there lies the accursed thing.”
The policeman, apparently quite satisfied with the porter’s story, turned upon the Count with a blustering and overbearing manner.
“Now, then,” he said, roughly, “give an account of yourself. Who are you and what are you doing here? But that is a foolish question; I know already that you are a Bohemian and a journeyman tinker.”
“A Bohemian? And a journeyman tinker?” repeated the Count, almost speechless with anger for a moment. “I am neither,” he added, endeavouring to control himself, and settling his refractory collar with one hand. “I am a Russian gentleman.”
“A gentleman — and a Russian,” said the policeman, slowly, as though putting no faith in the first statement and very little in the second. “I think I can provide you with a lodging for the night,” he added, facetiously.
“Slip past me, jump out of the window and run!” whispered the Cossack in the Count’s ear, in Russian.
“What are you saying in your infernal language?” asked the official.
“My friend advised me to run away,” said the Count, coolly sitting down, as though he were master of the situation. “Unfortunately for me, I was not taught to use my legs in that way when I was a boy.”
“I was,” said the Cossack. “Good-evening, Master Policeman.” He took his hat from the peg on the wall where it had hung undisturbed throughout the confusion, and bowing gravely to the man in uniform made as though he would go out of the room.
“So, so, not quite so fast, my friend,” said the policeman, putting himself in the way. “Heigh! heigh! Stop him! Don’t let him go,” he bawled, a second later.
Schmidt had paused a minute, watching his opportunity, then, taking a quick step backwards, he had vaulted through the open window with the agility of a cat, and was flying down the empty street at the speed only attainable by that deceptive domestic animal when pressed for time and anxious for its own safety.
“Sobáka!” growled Domnoff, disgusted at his companion’s defection.
“Either talk in a language that human beings can understand, or do not talk at all,” said one of the two men who guarded him.
Seeing that pursuit was useless, the spokesman of the police turned to the Count, twice as blustering and terrible as before.
“This settles the question,” he said. “To the police station you go, you and your bear-man of an accomplice. Potzbombardendonnerwetter! You Sappermentskerls! I will teach you to resist the police, to steal dolls and to jump out of windows! Now then, right about face — march!”
The Count did not stir from his chair. Dumnoff looked at him as though to ask instructions of a superior.
“If you can manage one of them, I can take these two,” he said in Russian. Suiting the action to the word, he suddenly bent down, slipped his arms round the legs of the two policemen, hurled them simultaneously head over heels and then charged the crowd, head downwards, upsetting every one who came in his way, and bursting into the street by sheer superior weight and impetus. An instant later, his shock head appeared at the window through which the Cossack had escaped.
“Come along!” he shouted to the Count, in his own language. “I have locked the street door and they cannot get out. Jump through the window.”
“Go, my friend,” answered the Count, calmly. “I will not run away.”
“You had much better come,” insisted Dumnoff, apparently indifferent to the noise of the crowd as it tried to force open the closed door, and shaking off two or three men who had made their way out into the street with him. He held the key in one hand, and his assailants had small chance of getting it away.
“You will not come?” he repeated. But the Count shook his head, within the room.
“Then I will not run away either,” said Dumnoff, the good side of his dull nature showing itself at last. With the utmost indifference to consequences he returned to the door, unlocked it, and strode through the midst of the people, who made way readily enough before him, after their late painful experience of his manner of making way for himself.
“I have changed my mind,” he said, in German, quietly placing himself between
his late keepers, who were alternately rubbing themselves and brushing the dust off each other’s clothes after their tumble.
In the astonished silence which succeeded Dumnoff’s return, the Count’s voice was heard again.
“I am both anxious and ready to explain everything, if you will do me the civility to listen,” he said. “The doll is the property of Herr Fischelowitz, the well-known tobacconist—”
“We shall see presently what you have to say for yourself,” interrupted the policeman. “We have had enough of these devilish fellows. Come, put them in handcuffs and off with them. And you three gentlemen,” he added, turning to the three porters, “will have the goodness to accompany us to the station, in order to give your evidence.”
“But my furniture and my beer saucers!” exclaimed the pallid host, suddenly remembering his losses. “Who is to pay for them?”
The Count answered the question for him.
“You, Master Host, who know us and have had our regular custom for years, but who have not dared to say a word in our defence throughout this disgraceful affair, you, I say, deserve to lose all that you have lost. Nevertheless, I can assure you that I will myself pay for what has been broken.”
The host was not much consoled by this magnanimous promise, which was received with jeers by the crowd. There was no time, however, to discuss the question. Dumnoff had quietly submitted his two huge fists to the handcuffs and a second pair was produced, to fit the Count. At this indignity he drew himself up proudly.
“Have I resisted the authority, or attempted to run away?” he inquired with flashing eyes.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 420